The Lost One
by Caskett54
Summary: "The lost one wakes. Three years to the day, she turns around and walks forward again." For nearly seven years, she's been trapped out of time, so far away from the place and people she loved. But when something from her old life appears in her new one, she sees a chance to return home. But can she deal with the implications of returning to a life she locked away years ago?
1. Running Back

She always knew they'd get here someday.

They were the kind of couple that takes things slowly. Soft kisses, holding each other as imminent death approached, candlelit dinners in the city of the ancestors. The adorably dorky couple that all of their friends liked to poke fun at. But they had to reach this point eventually. And now, almost eight months into their relationship, they finally had.

They appeared perfectly civilized as he pressed the button to open his door and stepped out of the way, allowing her into the room before him like and old-fashioned gentleman. But as soon as the door slid closed and they were alone, the calm, polite act vanished.

His lips smashed into hers, and she stumbled, the force of his movement pushing her back. Together they stepped the rest of the way until her back was pressed against the wall, and his mouth moved from her lips to her cheek to her neck. Her head dropped back, her lips gently parted as air flowed through them, in and out, in the form of broken, almost inaudible gasps. She draped her arms over his shoulders, her hands clasped together behind his head, but he quickly removed them as he unzipped the gray-and-yellow jacket of her medical uniform. She helped him to push the sleeves down her arms, wriggling out of the jacket until it fell, a lump of fabric on the floor behind her legs. She watched him as he took in the tight white button-up shirt she wore underneath; she could tell by the look on his face he wanted to tear it from her body, but she managed to gasp out "Careful," because the shirt was one of her favorites. So as his lips returned to hers, she could feel his fingers fumbling with the buttons, cautiously undoing them one by one.

She'd been looking forward to this. So much that she hadn't realize exactly what him seeing her naked would entail.

She'd managed to forget exactly what she'd been concealing, what he would soon discover. What he did discover as he pulled away to unbutton her pants.

"Jennifer," he said, stopping. "What's this?"

"What's what?" she asked, lifting her head and peering at him.

"This," he said, bringing his hand to a spot low on her stomach. She shivered as his fingers brushed against the small circle of rough tissue that marred her smooth skin.

And she remembered.

"It's nothing," she told him, but she didn't even sound convincing to herself.

"It's not nothing," he insisted. "Jen, that's –"

"Rodney, stop."

"A bullet wound," he finished, his voice strangely blank as realization washed over him. "Jennifer, you were shot."

"Nothing," she repeated weakly.

"When?" he asked shakily. "Here, on Atlantis? It doesn't look recent, but I don't know, I'm not a medical doctor –"

"It's not," she interrupted, her voice stronger with her need not to let him finish what will surely be a nearly endless run-on sentence. No, he wasn't a medical doctor. And a part of her desperately wished he was. "Recent. It's not. It's from…" She took a deep breath. "A long time ago. Another life."

"Another life?" As he took a step back, looking dumbfounded, she picked up her shirt from the floor and slid her arms into the sleeves. "Jennifer, tell me."

"No," she stated simply, looking down as she began to button up her shirt.

"No?"

"No," she repeated.

"Why not?"

"It's not important."

"Not important?" Rodney repeated indignantly. "How can it not be important? You were shot!"

"Yes, I was," she agreed. "It was a long time ago. I was a different person with a different life. And I'm fine now. It doesn't matter. It's not important." Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she slid to the floor with her back still pressed against the wall and tucked her legs up close to her chest..

"It matters to me," he said, walking over and sitting down on the floor next to her. "It's important to me."

"Why?"

"Because you never told me," he replied. "Dammit, Jennifer, this… this is important, okay? This is something I really should know about, seeing as I've been dating you for eight months and I've known you for longer." When she didn't reply, he reached for her hand where it lay, balanced, atop her knee, but she pulled it away before he could take it in his. "Please," he said softly. "Talk to me."

"No," she replied stubbornly, standing up and grabbing her jacket from the floor. "I don't want to talk about it, Rodney," she said as she forced her left arm into her sleeve and tugged it up to her shoulder. "I don't even want to think about it," she added as she did the same with the right. "I don't want to revisit that part of my life. I've moved on." She connected the zipper and pulled it all the way up, stretching the fabric of the tight jacket over the curves of her body. "I've moved on," she repeated, so softly that she wondered if he'd heard. And then she opened the door and left.

The woman who called herself Jennifer Keller strode with a confidence she did not feel through the halls of the city of Atlantis, galaxies away from both of the places she had once called home.

-0-0-0-

"Spinning. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Round and round again and come right back to where we were."

River Tam seemed to be in a rather good mood, unlike her brother. While Simon sat, looking utterly dejected, in a lawn chair near the open door of the cargo hold, looking out on the planet of Persephone, River danced. She twirled in circles, the skirt she'd borrowed from Inara flowing out in a colorful halo. Her bare feet made no sound as they brushed over the floor of the ship, and her dark, stringy hair floated around her head when she spun, impaired only by her lifted arms.

"River," Simon called weakly from his chair. "What're you talking about?"

"Spinning," she repeated, spinning once to emphasize her point. "Round and round in circles, running away and running back. Taken so far away, she can't find her way home. Running round in circles and she never goes anywhere. Three years today."

Most of the time, every word of his sister's babble was lost on Simon. Most of the time, he didn't understand a word of what she was trying to say to him. Most of this speech was no exception – it sounded like complete gibberish. Except for the last sentence.

Three years today.

He could never miss the significance of those words.

Three years ago today. Three years ago today, Mal, Zoe, and Jayne took Kaylee with them on a job. They needed her to reprogram something on the spot. Three years ago today, one of them got sloppy – to this day, they weren't sure who – and didn't realize that they'd triggered an alarm until it was too late. Three years ago today, three criminals fled the vault that four had gone into. Three years ago today, Mal, Zoe, and Jayne returned to the ship with downcast expressions and told him that it was likely he would never see their sweet mechanic again.

Three years ago today, his world fell to pieces around him.

"What do you mean?" he asked, because in light of 'three years today', another sentence, 'taken so far away, she can't find her way home', makes a little more sense. "River, what do you mean?"

"Serenity sings," she replied simply. "The lost one wakes. Three years to the day, she turns around and walks forward again. Spinning."

"What's spinning?" he demanded. "What do you mean, the lost one wakes? Are you talking about –"

"Three years today," she interrupted. "But… not quite seven."

"Not quite seven what?"

"Years," she said solemnly. "Three here, not quite seven there. Such a long time. She's so lonely."

The seven years thing made absolutely no sense to him, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. He couldn't dwell on that now. If River was talking about Kaylee, there were things he needed to ask.

"Is she okay?" he asked, standing up and hurrying over to where River stood. "Is she alive?"

"So lonely," River repeated. "So lost. She's with friends, but it's not the same. Never the same. Earth-That-Was is destined to die."

"Earth-That-Was is gone, River," Simon said. "It's been gone for ages."

She just shook her head, saying, "Not for the lost ones." Without another word, she spun away from him, continuing her dance and singing, "Spinning, spinning, spinning," over and over.

Simon stepped backwards away from her, his mind reeling, turning faster than ever, running on the fuel of the words his sister had spoken. He knew she was a reliable source – she read the thoughts of the world around her, tapped into the consciousness of the universe, and spoke the truths she learned in the form of poetic nonsense. If he could decipher the nonsense, he could understand so much. But it was normally so random, so unintelligible, that even he couldn't decode it. Not even when it mattered most.

Three years today… that part was obvious.

Spinning, running in circles, coming right back to the start… he didn't understand that.

Taken so far away, can't find her way home… if she was talking about Kaylee, that would mean she was alive and okay, but that she couldn't figure out how to get back to them.

Serenity sings… the ship was happy about something. Or… something.

The lost one wakes… could the 'lost one' be Kaylee?

Three years here, seven years there… how could that be possible?

Earth-That-Was is destined to die… but it already died. What could that mean?

God, it was gibberish. It meant something – he knew it did. Of course it did. If it didn't, she wouldn't be saying it. But its meaning fell on deaf ears, because try as he might to learn, Simon did not speak the language of his sister's damaged mind.

So he just collapsed into the lawn chair that once belonged to Kaylee, trying to drink in any remaining fragments of her essence that had lingered with it, without success. She was gone. He was beginning to accept that. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back. She couldn't. If she could, she already would've come running right back to them.

Running back to him.


	2. Gray Uniform

They'd tried to take a step forward. Instead, because of her and her damn past, they ended up taking several steps back. In the next few weeks, Jennifer and Rodney didn't talk about her scar. They didn't talk much at all. He seemed angry that she never told him she'd been shot, angry that she refused to tell him when he confronted her; she, on the other hand, was falling into a state of antisocial coldness, freezing everyone out as she tried to reestablish herself as Jennifer Keller and remind herself that she was not, in fact, the sweet girl who was shot in the stomach, the one who loved the doctor.

She knew that their friends had noticed the sudden reverse in the progress of their relationship. Ronan resumed his old habit of constantly flirting with her (she quickly pushed him away). Teyla moved from her team's table to where Jennifer was sitting alone at dinner and tried to ask her about it, but she insisted that they were fine, they were just going through a rough period and they'd deal with it, and she didn't want to talk about it. And she knew that John Sheppard had probably approached Rodney about it, but she was fairly confident that Rodney hadn't told him what was going on.

Over the past eight months, she'd gotten into the habit of sitting with Rodney and the rest of his team – John, Teyla, and Ronan. Sometimes Robert Woolsey would join them, and occasionally Zelenka. But after they'd fought, she'd stopped. She'd claimed a two-person table by a window and gone back to that table every meal. She was alone there most of the time, except for the time Teyla came to talk to her, and one lunchtime when Ronan came over to flirt, maybe to see if her affections were up for grabs again, but she quickly made it clear that they weren't. Other than that, there was only one person who came and sat with her in the two and a half weeks after she fought with Rodney, and that was Zelenka. He became something of a source, telling her how Rodney was taking the separation and occasionally implying that he would like to know what they argued about, but he never pressed the matter. Eventually, their conversations evolved from 'this is how Rodney is doing' to 'this is the crazy thing that Rodney did today', and honestly, it was nice. She heard about his insane escapades in the lab and the field straight from the source most of the time, but when she was barely speaking to Rodney, it was nice to have Zelenka to tell the stories to her. It… it helped, she supposed.

Really, nothing very interesting happened until nearly three weeks after their argument, when his team came back through the gate with a man.

He was relatively young, probably late twenties, average in almost every way. His hair was short and brown, nearly hidden under the helmet he wore; his eyes were brown and small; he was of completely average height; and his face was utterly forgettable. But what really caught Jennifer's eye was the gray uniform and helmet that he wore.

She was in the control room waiting for Rodney and his team to return when they came through the gate. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the man, and panic welled up inside of her, starting in the pit of her stomach and rising to her eyes and flushed cheeks. She opened her mouth to shriek but successfully stifled it, so the only noise she made as instinct took over and she ducked out of sight was a small, barely audible squeak.

"Dr. Keller?" Chuck turned away from the gate room, looking over his shoulder to where she was hiding behind him. "Is something wrong?"

"You need to get him out of here," she said in a hushed voice. "You need to get him out of here _now._"

Chuck leaned over to his microphone, saying, "Colonel Sheppard, take the visitor to the briefing room." Then he looked back at Jennifer. "I don't know what's going on," he told her, "but if there's a problem, take it up with Sheppard."

Jennifer nodded and watched the group from her hiding spot as they headed for the briefing room. Thankfully, John was lagging at the back of the group, and once the man disappeared into the briefing room, she ran out and grabbed his arm. "Colonel, wait. I need to talk to you?"

"Can it wait?" he asked.

"No."

"Is this about Rodney? Because I talked to him but he wouldn't tell me anything, and I'm not sure –"

"It's not about Rodney," she assured him.

"Then can it wait?"

"No." She took a deep breath. "It's about the man you just brought through the gate."

"He's a soldier," John told her. "A representative of the government of his galaxy –"

"The Alliance," she interjected.

He raised an eyebrow. "How did you know that?"

"I've encountered the Alliance before," she said, almost wincing at the understatement. "Trust me, these are not good people. You don't want to ally yourself with them. You don't even want to associate with them."

"You've encountered them before," he echoed. "When? Where?"

"I can't tell you."

"I have the highest security clearance in existence, Jennifer!"

"It's not about security clearance." She sighed. "It's about me. And I can't tell you. Just… trust me on this. These are twisted, manipulative people."

"I'll keep that in mind," he said. "Anything else?"

"John, you have to believe me."

"Oh, I believe you," he assured her. "I'm just…" He trailed off, and after a minute, her mind filled in the blanks. "You're just not sure if you trust me." She let out a string of colorful curses, and it wasn't until she noticed the puzzled look on John's face that she realized exactly what she was doing.

"Jennifer…" he said cautiously. "What… was that?"

She bit back another choice swear word. "That was… Chinese."

"You know Chinese."

"Yeah, uh…" She bit her lip, cursing herself in her mind. "Mandarin. Mostly swear words. Please, don't even ask."

"Okay. I won't." He gestured back to the briefing room, saying, "I've got to go. I'll… think about what you said."

"Please do," she replied as he turned and headed into the briefing room. She quickly moved out of sight as the doors open; she hadn't recognized the Alliance soldier and it was very unlikely that he would know her face, but everything in her was screaming not to let him see her.

She barely made it back to her room without breaking into a run or screaming to someone that the Alliance were there. They wouldn't understand. They didn't know the horror she'd endured at their hands. They didn't know what they'd done to her, what they'd done to transform a fun, playful, genius of a teenage girl into a disturbed killer who spouted gibberish that no one could understand. They didn't know. They couldn't.

God, she needed to see someone who could know, who could understand. Someone who'd experienced it, first or second hand. A Tam would be best. But they were a galaxy and several hundred years away. They didn't even exist.

That was a really awful thought.

But as she sat on her bed, wishing she could go home, a thought occurred to her, a thought that gave her a spark of something close to hope.

_How could an Alliance soldier have gotten here, to this galaxy? And more importantly – to this time?_

-0-0-0-

"I'm coming with you."

John, Rodney, Teyla, and Ronan all looked up at the same time. Ronan's gun was halfway into its holster; John was in the middle of saying something to Teyla; and Rodney's hand hovered an inch away from one of the pockets of his bulletproof vest, his fingers wrapped around an Ancient life signs detector. He was the first to react.

"Jennifer," he stated, taking in the sight of her, the black vest over her gray-and-yellow jacket and the obvious lack of a medical kit in a pack on her back.

"I'm coming," she repeated. "Don't even try to stop me, Rodney. I need to do this."

"Not trying to stop you," he assured her as he tucked the life signs detector into his pocket. "I'm guessing you don't feel like telling me why you need to come."

"Because you're heading back to the planet where that Alliance soldier came from," she replied, "and there's something I need to figure out."

"And you don't want to tell us what that is."

"Not really," she agreed, walking past him and moving to stand with John and Teyla, both of whom cast her a slightly strange look as she offhandedly brushed off her boyfriend's inquiries. As they should, she supposed. She wasn't acting like herself. Like either of herselves. Jennifer Keller or the sweet girl she left behind almost seven years before.

"Okay, then," John said eventually. "Guys. Jennifer. Let's move out."

Jennifer made an effort to stay on the opposite side of the group from Rodney as they headed to the gate room, not because she was angry, but because she couldn't deal with him just yet. Not when she was being forced to confront these aspects of the life she'd tried to rid herself of, not because she wanted to, but because she knew it was gone forever and she'd do better to just forget it, no matter how much she missed it. Not when for the first time, there was a possibility that maybe, somehow, she wouldn't have to be Jennifer Keller anymore. Maybe she could be who she was, who she ought to be, once again.

She had a few second thoughts as the gate opened. She was walking right into what could be an Alliance stronghold, a beachhead in this galaxy. What if she was recognized? She'd be completely and utterly screwed, and she'd put the people she'd grown to care about in danger. But she couldn't just not go. She couldn't give up on this. Because for the first time in seven years, there was a possibility that all was not lost. That she could go back. That she could see the friends she thought she'd never see again. That she could be who she was born to be.

She lifted a hand to her chest and unzipped her bulletproof vest at the top, placing her fingers on the spot between her collarbones and feeling, through the fabric of her shirt and jacket, the slight raise from the pendant she always wore. The piece of jewelry that wasn't meant to hang from a silver chain around her neck, but which she'd moved there five years ago as a sort of compromise. It helped reassure her, told her that no matter where she went (or when she went), the people she loved, the people who loved her, were with her. She carried them with her. The rest of them lived in her heart, and he hung on a chain from her neck.


End file.
